


love song, remixed

by frostbitten_cheeks



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2020, Established Relationship, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, a love letter to realistic love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22971934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostbitten_cheeks/pseuds/frostbitten_cheeks
Summary: They’ve been together for over a decade. Love isn’t the photogenic illusion movies advertise, at this point.Or: love in its realest form, presented in ten acts.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 167





	love song, remixed

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes i make myself emotional over how long dan and phil have loved each other. and sometimes i think of sunlit mornings and soft kisses, but other times, i feel like celebrating the candid moments of love that aren’t usually displayed in media. you’re welcome.

I.

  
  


It rains nonstop in the weeks leading up to November. The photoshoot for Phil’s new glitch merch gets rescheduled again and again, and Phil begins checking the forecast every evening with Sarah on the phone. Dan says, only once, “I guess that’s what _raincheck_ stands for,” and learns quickly not to try again. 

On the first week of the month, the rain lets up. The shoot is set for half ten and Sarah’s meeting them for coffee before the three of them walk down to location. Phil even wakes up early to leave spare time, except by nine he's been in the bathroom for over fifteen minutes, supposedly shaving. Dan's lacing up his boots while listening to his soft groaning through the open door -- which, not an unusual sound for Phil before coffee, but still.

"Are you okay there, bub," he ventures after a particularly aggressive grunt, pokes his head around the doorway to look at Phil's face through the fogged mirror. Phil looks at him with a pained expression, and the problem becomes evident immediately. " _Phil_ , come _on_. You knew it was shoot day, why didn't you wash your face last night!"

Phil twists his nose glumly, dragging the razor over his spotted chin. There are tiny specks of blood forming high on his jawline already. "I don't know, I was so tired and I didn't think it'd be this bad! Is it this bad?"

There's an array of pimples on his forehead and chin, and a notably bad zit on the crook of his nose. Dan does not consider, even for a moment, lying. "Fucking shit, man, yeah -- I can see your zit from over here. You know you break out when you don't wash properly."

Phil grumbles slightly, setting the razor down on their counter. His hair's still productless and limp, falling over onto his forehead. "Yeah, okay. Can you call Sarah and tell her I might need makeup for this one? I gotta do my hair and we’re running late."

Dan snorts lightly. " _Might,_ yeah, right. Also, fuck you, I need to get ready too and you've been hogging!"

Phil fixes him with a glare that's nastier than usual through the glass, eyebrows disappearing low behind his glasses. "You're coming as crew, Dan, I'm the only one getting photographed."

That's true, so Dan calls Sarah, who huffs but asks if Phil's shade is _translucent_ or _vampire intensified_. Dan puts her on speaker to make Phil laugh while he sprays his hair and Dan presses an ice cube to the zit through a cloth. Sarah hangs up and Dan tilts his head, appraises, "Jesus, it's so big it has its own persona. Maybe you should get it separate merch."

Phil, finally, cracks a smile. He wriggles a finger sticky from hair-gel at Dan and earns himself a shriek and an elbow to the ribs. "At least I won't feel lonely in front of the camera 'cause I'll have Eric with me."

"Ew, it's not an _Eric_ \-- maybe, like, Jeremiah. Jeremiah and Phil. Look, you're replacing me in the Dan and Phil duo already!"

Jeremiah gets buried under a layer of foundation later that day. Dan spends three consecutive early mornings inspecting Phil's nose to the sound of hoarse protests, mumbling mourning words to their fading new friend. On the fourth Phil wakes with a smooth face and Dan emails him a template of a funeral speech. Phil, less amused, uses his tweezers to pluck a hair out of Dan's nose in retaliation.

  
  
  


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II.

  
  


When Dan wakes to a relatively free day in February, Phil is already out of bed. He shoves his feet into slippers and rubs a fist against his bleary eyes and bids Phil good morning by bumping their hips together in the kitchen, gentle.

They don't talk throughout the day. Phil retrieves a spoon from the drawer for Dan's cereal without being asked. Dan sits on the sofa typing on his laptop as Phil circles the table absentmindedly, talking to Nigel on the phone. They eat leftovers for lunch at different times, Phil sorting taxes in the office and Dan drafting pitches for the sixteenth time on the roof.

Phil makes his afternoon break an Apex session, as he did every day lately. Dan watches from the armchair for a while and, later, rolls over on the other chair and wordlessly reaches for the mouse, taking over for three rounds.

They play mostly in silence, only making involuntary sounds of defeat or rejoice, the game's soundtrack playing in the background. Dan loses and there's no sore banter, he only leans into Phil's lap and quits in favour of wandering Instagram while Phil plays another two rounds. He doesn't do so well, but stays there with Dan's head on his thigh as he returns to his laptop and actual work.

At night, Dan curls himself under their sheets and presses his damp curls to Phil's shoulder the way he knows Phil dislikes. Phil sighs and pushes him a few inches to the left, but shifts so their feet tangle together below them. In its simplicity, it's a familiar gesture of intimacy.

Dan says, very quietly, "I had a lot of thoughts today," and Phil reaches over to turn off the lights and shuffles back, answers, "Yeah, I could tell. Bad thoughts?"

Some days Dan's quietness means it's a bad day. But not always. Some days, he's quiet because he's thinking, because he's planning, because he's tired. Some days he's quiet because Phil isn't _people_ , being around Phil is like being only with himself, and this doesn't necessarily call for talking.

Dan hums, flips the pillow so the damp spot is facing the mattress, says, "No, just thoughts. I had a riveting inner monologue about what I'd tell Jeff Bezos if we'd met."

Phil's smile is invisible in the darkness, but Dan reaches for it, knows it's there. Phil says, "Okay, tell me all about it tomorrow, yeah?", and the thing is, maybe he will, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll reenact every well-phrased argument or maybe they'll forget about this by tomorrow, move onto another day. The point is, Dan can tell Phil anything, but he doesn't always have to.

He kisses whichever part he can find in the dark, this time the sharp bone at the end of Phil's shoulder, and tells Phil a mumbled _g'dnight_. Phil squeezes Dan's thigh, and they turn over to go to sleep.

  
  
  


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III.

  
  


“We are not having sex tonight,” Dan informs Phil when they return from Cornelia’s birthday party, leaning against the wall to toe off his dress shoes. Phil humphs and shuts the door and takes off both of their coats, says, “Why not, I like the pants you’re wearing today,” manages to only whine a little.

Dan’s pants are red and tight under his jeans, and they’re Phil’s favourites. But they’re both tired and smell from other people’s cigarette smoke and Dan’s spilled alcohol on his shirt because the place was packed too tight. “Listen, I’ll blow you if you ask really nicely, but that’s my line here, pal.”

Phil’s hands are big and gentle and they’re nice against Dan’s neck on their retreating journey to the bedroom, but Dan’s mood, as inescapable as it is when he does want it, is as resolute when he doesn’t.

Sex, with Phil, is not one thing or the other.

Dan has learned so many types of sex with Phil, there’s no way to keep track of them all. There’s slow, sensual sex and quick, desperate sex, there’s sex for intimacy and sex for release and sex because simply because they’re bored. There’s staggeringly good sex and disappointingly bad sex, there’s vanilla sex and spicy sex and adventurous sex on special occasions. There’s sex where they don’t need anything but each other and there’s sex where they need roleplay to push them over, there’s sex when one of them is more into it and the other tags along. There’s lethargic handjobs in bed because Phil woke up hard and Dan’s still half asleep, there’s sex they stop in the middle because Dan suddenly felt needy and Phil’s fucking him with only half a mind.

Sometimes they have sex three nights in a row. Sometimes they go two weeks without. Tonight, Dan’s grumpy and disgusting and his stomach is rolling from the cheese appetizer he stupidly ate, and there’s no sugarcoating it: anal sex, as great as it is once you’ve adjusted, feels like the backwards action of pooping when you haven’t.

They collapse on the bed, and Dan doesn’t even get on his knees, sucks Phil off while they’re both curled over the bedding. The cigarette smell, unfortunately, doesn’t get out of their coats for weeks.

  
  
  


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IV.

  
  


Settling down into their seats in the cinema, Phil turns off the torch on his phone and shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth. Dan side-eyes him and states, intentionally judgmental, "You know, when I was eight, I went with a friend to see a movie, and he --"

"Swallowed popcorn too quickly and choked, and you had to leave before it even started," Phil cuts him off, eyes never straying from his phone. They've been reading articles about Ariana Grande's new album since they left the flat. "Yeah, you told me."

Dan narrows his eyes, kicks Phil in the shin just to be spiteful, but lets their fingers perch uncommonly close on the handrest to compensate for it. Scarlett Johansson is incredible as always and they chatter about it endlessly all through the night, inhaling popcorn equally fast.

This conversation happens a dozen, a hundred, a million times over: Dan would tell a joke and Phil would look at him fondly, say, _you told me that already_ ; or, Phil would suddenly remember a repressed childhood memory and begin telling it enthusiastically only to have Dan shoulder him with a smile, say, _I know how that story ends_. 

"It's so hard to be funny with you," Phil complains one evening, while they're chewing pizza and going over clips for Phil's new video. He told an unplanned anecdote on camera and Dan finished it aloud before the footage stopped rolling. "I mean, semi-scripted banter aside. We're boring, we know everything about each other already! It's like you used Loki’s Scepter on me and now you're at the core of my brain like, all the time, and you just know what I'm about to say!"

Dan says, " _Mate_ ," with wide eyes and a disbelieving grin, because what the fuck, and then follows with, "Listen, you say that but then you pull crap like ' _you used an Infinity Stone on me_ ' and how the fuck is anyone supposed to predict shit like that?"

Which is fair, and makes Phil laugh a little, but later Phil tells a fun fact about kangaroos in the clip and Dan interjects with, "Ooh, it's the one they told us during tour in Australia, isn't it?", and so the issue remains unresolved.

This is not, however, always a disadvantage. Phil knows so many of Dan's innermost memories that he can recognise traumatic triggers with a single glance; Dan can tell what Phil's getting at even through the most convoluted of metaphors; they reduce communication, through swapped stories and shared jokes and uncensored thoughts, to its bare minimums. First to short sentences, then to monosyllabic words, and then to body language alone.

Dan knows this, appreciates this, sometimes depends on it like a lifeline. But in the summer they travel to France and Dan says, "Oh my god, we were just across the river when --", and Phil already knows Collin fell into the water; Dan groans, loudly, and the cycle begins again.

  
  
  


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V.

The cashier at their usual shop has a sharp jaw and bulging biceps and an employee shirt that's at least two sizes too small, a badge that says _Liam!_ cheerfully. Dan doubts he's that cheerful to be working in retail, but he never feels like asking when he's there.

Phil is there far more frequently, anyway. From the moment Liam starts working in the shop, Phil remembers very suddenly a lot of items they forgot to order online: _I can't believe we left out almond flour,_ and, _Monopoly night isn't the same without Doritos,_ and, _oh, the yoghurt is expired, I'll pop in to buy another, yeah?_

Sometimes Dan waves him off, graciously doesn't mention how neither of them bakes or eats yoghurt, ever. Other times, he pulls on his jacket and says, "Alright, I'll tag along," only to watch with stifled snickers the way Phil's ears turn pink and he stammers in front of Liam, a trainwreck of, "Oh, uh, thank you! For, your duty, you know -- um, good night, bye," from a safe distance away.

Liam, in true straight boy fashion, doesn't notice a single thing. Dan pats Phil's back encouragingly when they leave, Phil's shoulders drawn high, and he tries not to giggle as he says, "Hey, don't be hard on yourself, buddy. That was almost real English, you're improving!"

Three months into Liam's budding career in sales, Phil has managed to ask him how his day is going, receive a compliment about Phil's taste in candy, and, once, iconically, ask Liam whether he's watched the game on Sunday. There was, in fact, a game on Sunday, and Liam has, in fact, watched it, which Phil was evidently not prepared for, because he did not think ahead about which game is _the game_ or the way he would not have any knowledge about said game, no matter which it was.

Dan burst into laughter the minute the doors closed behind them and had tears running down his face halfway home. Phil vehemently refused to tweet about it, but the draft remained in Dan's phone for months.

Unfortunately for Phil's eyes and Dan's general amusement, Liam quits four months in. Phil comes back from the shop one day empty-handed but a single bottle of Coke, and mopes through that entire week. When they run out of milk Phil pouts and refuses to go because, _what's the point,_ which is funny enough that Dan's not even bothered about going himself.

"He was so," Phil begins out of nowhere that same afternoon, blinking at the tv. They're watching Bake Off and Dan chooses to assume Phil's not talking about Paul -- although, no judgement, that's also valid. Except Phil's gaze is out of focus, so probably not Paul. "And his hair was so. How was his hair so…?"

"His hair was very good hair," Dan agrees easily, because it was. He asked Liam a while ago what conditioner he uses, and in the same true straight boy fashion, the answer was _my flatmate's._ Dan never told Phil that because, first, it would certainly ruin some of the magic, and, second, he didn't want to brag about managing a full sentence to Phil's four stammering words. This was, perhaps, one of the very few things Dan has spared Phil in ten years.

Phil sighs, very dramatically, and that's the end of Liam's brief stint in their lives. On a completely unrelated note, Dan decides they're having a Thor marathon that weekend. He's sure Chris Hemsworth will numb all of Phil's pain -- or, well. His abs will.

  
  
  


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VI.

"Listen, if you eat cabbage and fart under the covers _one more time_ \--"

  
  
  


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VII.

  
  


It's only stiflingly hot in London for a short while every year, but traditionally, Dan begins stripping out of more and more clothes linearly with the steady rise of temperatures. By the peak of their second heatwave, Dan begins going about his days stark naked; this is a yearly occurrence, and so it’s not exactly remarkable.

“We’ve got Norman now, Dan,” Phil tells him one morning, swatting at him with a kitchen towel for sitting bare-assed on the counter. The cool marble feels really fucking good against his thighs, however, and he doesn’t budge. “You can’t let our kid see you like this, he’ll have emotional trauma and we’ll have to find him a fish therapist.”

Dan shrugs carelessly, adds another dash of milk to his cold brew. He has learned, mostly from experience, not to drink anything remotely hot over his exposed dick. “I don’t know, man, it might be good for him. _Today I wanna talk about how two giant men trapped me in a glass container and made me be social with a bunch of shrimp_. Hey, don’t you think squids kinda look like they’d be the therapists of the ocean?”

Phil thumbs open his phone and Dan slides off to peer over his shoulder. They contemplate which type of squid looks like he’d have a Ph.D. in psychology the most, and Phil only jabs him once about the shape his ass left on the counter. He does grope it a little as they wash the dishes, though, just because he can.

Dan still remembers, vaguely, feeling self-conscience of his body around Phil -- a somewhat frightening long time ago. He remembers spending hours in Phil’s bed back in Rawtenstall, feverishly taking off as many articles of clothing as they dared, only to draw Phil’s bedcovers up to his nipples the moment sex turned into talking. He remembers worrying about things like how his stomach fat looked when he sat down, or if he was trimmed enough, or whether his bum would look too hairy if he turned on his hands and knees.

Now, they eat microwavable frozen Mexican food for dinner because neither of them feels like cooking, and Dan pats his food-baby while they watch an old episode of Black Mirror. Phil unties the strings of his pyjama pants and puffs out his belly, makes their patented whale sounds; they laugh, and Phil splays a warm hand on Dan’s struggling stomach to sooth it.

Here is how Dan remembers the beginning, for him: they passed out naked together one night, and he woke to Phil’s soft dick uncovered, realized he fancied it just as much like that. Phil put on pants to get them toasts from downstairs, but Dan ate his unclothed, one leg resting on Phil’s desk chair and the other curled around Phil’s waist. His stomach must’ve folded and his hair was a mess, but Phil kissed the jam off his mouth anyway, didn’t seem to care. Everything else, as they say, gradually followed. 

  
  
  
  


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VIII.

  
  


The Dan and Phil Book of Domestics, Vol. 11, contains:

“Dan,” Phil says through gritted teeth, pinching his nose beneath his glasses, “Why couldn’t you just choose what to order while I was _doing the liveshow_? Now it’s late, _again_ , and it’s gonna be at least forty minutes until it arrives --” 

“I _did_ choose,” Dan says, not even attempting to be quiet, “ _You’re_ being unreasonable because you’re hangry, _again_ \--”

“I’m not! Why does this always have to be about me, I asked you to do this one thing --!”

“But I _did_ choose, the fucking _pork stir-fried rice_ , except _no_ \--”

“Because it’s got that sticky sauce and I hate how it feels against my teeth!”

“Oh my fucking god, Phil, then don’t say ‘I’m good with anything’ if you are not, in fact, _good with anything --_!”

  
  


And, also:

  
  


Dan bangs his hand against the steering wheel, perhaps a bit harder than he’d meant. “You told me to _take a right and do a U-turn,_ Phil --”

Phil’s red is colouring neck, but Dan knows as well as anything that there’s not a splinter of a chance that he’d back down. “I remembered it on the right, okay! That’s where it’s always been, maybe they like, moved --”

Dan’s hand is aching, but he considers banging it again for good measures. “It didn’t fucking _move_ , you asshole! You got the wrong direction, like you always do, even though I _told you_ to ask your mum before we took her car --”

“It’s just the market, Dan, I know where the market is in my own parents’ town --”

“Well, do you _see_ any fucking pumpkins here, the place you led us to, in _your own parents’ town --_ ”

“They could’ve moved, it’s not impossible --!”

“Phil Lester, turn on Waze right this instant or I will literally shove you out your mother’s car and leave you here to die with your nonexistent pumpkins.”

  
  


And of course, the classic repetitive rendition of:

  
  


Phil stands there, one hand clutched over his chest, a look of absolute betrayal on his face. “You did _what_.”

Dan shoves the offending remote aside with his right arm, wanting desperately to rid of the physical reminder of his sins. “I’m sorry, look, I’ll sit through it with you anyway and I won’t say a goddamn thing, I swear --”

Phil’s lips are so pursed they’re almost invisible. “But we said. That we’re watching it together. That we’d wait for each other with every new episode.”

Dan accepts, in that instant, that he has fucked up. “I know, fuck, I know, but I was in bed and I didn’t think and you know stupid Netflix, one episode automatically rolls into two --”

“ _You watched more than one fucking episode without me?!”_

When Phil pulls out the curse words, all hell breaks loose.

  
  
  


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IV.

  
  


A year and a half after the discontinued Heartthrob video saw the light of day, Bryony invites them over for a rematch. They sit around her coffee table with a good bottle of wine and Kpop playing in the background, welcome the return of Richard into their lives.

Richard is a foreign exchange student this time, who has dog breath and just hopes to graduate from high school before the age of 20. He’s joined by Max, a school bully who writes x-rated notes to girls in class, and Aaron, who’s got a cool jacket but also has a pet spider and always spits when he talks. The three of them are truly horrified by the appalling options, but Dan still wins by claiming Phil would find a way to connect with Richard’s love for studying and choose to interpret dog breath as meaning Richard has a dog. Dan is not, as it turns out, wrong.

They spend the rest of the evening flipping through the cards. The 90’s were a cultural disaster, but they certainly had cute pictures of boys; Dan argues that Randy’s abs-revealing crop-top marks a genius before his time, while Bryony maintains that Jim’s thighs were made for choking. Phil draws random cards of traits and spends fifteen minutes trying to convince them why a treasure-hunting beau is the ultimate catch.

Bryony asks him, after, who he’d have chosen to keep if they were real. There’s a wineglass in his one hand and the other is resting against Dan’s back, and he says, neutral-faced, “I don’t know, they’re all kind of awful, aren’t they? I’d kinda rather stick with Dan, anyway,” and the thing is, there’s no disgustingly mushy intention about it.

Phil’s bad with phrasing his feelings, at the best of times, incapable of letting them show as his worst. He’s stubborn to a fault and always thinks he’s right and he’s shit at handling other people’s expectations. Dan lets himself direct his anger at those closest to him too often, shuts down when he’s under duress, doesn’t know when he’s got to stop pushing. They make mistakes and they get on each other’s nerves, time and time and time again. This will never change.

But when Phil says he’d rather stick with Dan, he means it. Dan doesn’t want a plastic version of Phil, isn’t interested in a perfect alternative from a cardboard game. He loves Phil because it’s Phil, and he’s an idiot, but that’s never stopped them before. The feeling, he knows, goes both ways.

Bryony wrinkles her face into her own glass and says unashamedly, “Dude, that’s gross.” Dan breaks into laughter and thinks, okay, maybe it’s just a little mushy anyway. It's at least the truth. 

  
  
  


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X.

Late in 2018, Phil starts bookmarking botanical gardens he finds aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes he pins them to the bar on Dan’s laptop, as well; sometimes he only tilts his screen so Dan can see when they’re leaning against each other on the sofa. He collects a handful of favourites throughout the year and by 2019, he narrows it down to small, private, must have waterlilies. He never tells Dan why, and Dan doesn’t need to ask. 

On nights he can’t fall asleep, Dan scrolls through Wikipedia for hours. He reads about _Friday on Elm Street_ and a Bulgarian newspaper named _Epoha_ and learns Eliana was once the 93rd most popular name in the US. Phil makes their coffee extra strong in the morning and Dan warms his hands around the ceramics, asks him, “Eliana has a lovely sound, doesn’t it?”, doesn’t offer prefaces.

Two years into their relationship, Dan stood on the doorstep of their first flat, watched Phil sweat through his shirt while carrying moving boxes and thought, rather ferociously, _I want to see this man sweat for the rest of my life._ He later panicked over the thought of Phil not feeling the same, tried asking Phil of his opinion regarding Dan’s sweat only to be met with baffled eyes, but. Also later, he thought this about Phil’s drunk laughter and Phil’s ugliest orgasm face and Phil’s contact lenses on the bathroom sink, resolved to not think about it so intensely anymore.

And so, when five years into their relationship Phil got so mad at him that he slammed the front door and didn't come back for a few hours, Dan didn’t remember to fear the possibility of breaking up. He took a shower and he made tea and he stayed up late talking everything over with Phil, and he went to bed knowing what he knew before: this was it for them, and everything else was merely obstacles.

Phil bookmarks botanical gardens because they agreed once, a long time ago, that it’s the ideal wedding venue. Still: he doesn’t look for engagement rings, and Dan doesn’t plan his speeches. They want two kids, maybe three, definitely a dog. Phil handles their pension funds and Dan has numbers of real estate agencies on his phone. They joke about retiring to Florida, make plans for ten years ahead, cite each other in their life insurance. Dan says, _doesn’t Eliana sound nice_ , and Phil doesn’t need to ask before he answers, _I really like Eliana Rose._

Some years they think weddings are nice; some years they think it’s a worthless piece of paper. In all of them, the matter of spending the rest of their lives together is an established fact that nothing can unsettle. Ten years in there’s no need to ask: them, just like this, is it, forevermore. 


End file.
